Happy New Year to all my readers and those who are members of the Facebook pages.
I have now taken up my pen again after a break at Christmas, or rather I’m flexing my typing fingers again to carry on with Withershynnes no 4, Weave Walker.
In this one Mabel comes up against an errant squirrel and the first thing I had to do was to research how red squirrels communicate with each other. There were no grey squirrels in England in the 13th century so it’s the slightly smaller and very much more endearing red version we meet in Weave Walker.
Who could have guessed that red squirrels have quite a plethora of different sounds with which they signal to each other; alarm, interest, happiness or fear. It’s really quite a difficult task to put down on the page what the squirrel’s language is like, so that humans might understand it! But I’ve done my best.
Red Squirrel Woodland Trust
~~A felon banished from the land for the murder of a woman is pardoned by the king and returns to Bedwyn. There’s mixed feeling in the village about his guilt but there’s only really one man who is really upset about the man’s return. The husband of the woman he murdered.
Things get heated as the friends of the man take his side and scuffles break out.
Then abruptly the woman’s husband disappears and his second wife is very worried that the murderer might have killed him. She asks Mabel and Gabriel to look into his disappearance.
Meanwhile the lord is having a new barn built on the estate. Little do they know what is buried underneath it.
Early on in the book, Mabel is having trouble with a misguided squirrel and a rather overbearing suitor. Gabriel becomes rather jealous. Mabel is not in the slightest bit interested in him really but just to annoy Gabriel, she pretends, with terrible consequences. And then there’s the travelling musicians – Gabriel gets Mabel in a sticky situation.~~
Video of a red squirrel in a nest box warning her babies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HleGtR7SLgo. Back Yard Birding.
Red Squirrel in a manuscript from Pinterest.
Content retrieved from: https://susannamnewstead.co.uk/2022/01/17/squirrelling-it-away/.
